Manhattan Lags With Suburban Shift Fueling Region’s Home Sales

(Bloomberg) -- New York area home shoppers were in a buying mood last month. Everywhere, that is, except Manhattan.

Sales contracts for homes across New York City's suburbs -- and even Brooklyn -- surged in July, the first full month after in-person property showings returned after a prolonged lockdown.

In Manhattan, however, pending sales plummeted -- with co-ops and condos each falling nearly 60% compared with a year earlier, according to a report today by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

Thousands of Manhattanites have left the city since March to ride out the pandemic. Some are still unsure of whether they'll return. The potential buyers who remain are demanding deeper discounts according to Steven James, chief executive officer of Douglas Elliman in New York.

“They're asking for 10% to 20% off,” James said. “They're not getting it-- but that's what they're asking for.”

• Cheaper properties in Manhattan, usually a sweet spot in a borough where the median hovers near $1 million, also saw lackluster interest. Pending deals for co-ops priced between $500,000 and $999,000 fell 47% to 137, the firms said.
• Condo contracts in that price range fell 64%.
• There were no contracts signed last month at $20 million or above, the firms said.
• Pending sales in the suburbs are surging. Contracts for single-family homes more than doubled in Westchester to 987.
• In Long Island -- excluding the Hamptons and North Fork-- contracts jumped 41% to 3,640. The tony suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut, saw a 72% increase in pending home sales.
• Brooklyn was brisk too. Co-op contracts jumped 29% in July.

Manhattan sellers might be waiting for a better time. In July, they removed 886 listings from the market, according to a separate report by UrbanDigs. More than half of those withdrawals happened in the last week, the company said.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.